Technology Corner Update moves to Topica

It's official. After several weeks of testing and tinkering, I sent March 19th's Technology Corner update using my website host's Mailman program and Topica's list distribution service. Topica easily won. If you want to continue to receive the weekly show update, and you haven't yet confirmed your address to Topica, you'll need to send a blank e-mail message to tc_update-subscribe@topica.com and then confirm the response from Topica.

I sent the Mailman message at 9:50 and the Topica message at 9:55. Every one of my test addresses received the Topica message within a minute. The best performance from Mailman was 1 hour 4 minutes (to an address at my own domain) and some of the copies didn't arrive until after 1:30 in the afternoon.

For the math challenged (such as those at Blue Host, who seem to think this kind of performance is both acceptable and normal) that's 3 hours 44 minutes. Blue Host's hosting package is adequate, but the system administrators seem not to comprehend that sometimes there's a need to distribute messages quickly.

After using Topica for a few weeks, I'm generally happy with the way it's working. Some people have had trouble getting subscribed, but most of those have been resolved.

A free website development tool

"If it's free, you can be sure it's worth at least what you paid for it." I can be skeptical about free tools, but I often give them a try because the price is attractive. It's unlikely that I'll stop using Macromedia's Dreamweaver for website work, but the free open-source Nvu HTML editor is impressive.

Nvu runs on Windows, but it was developed for Linspire, one of the Linux variants, so it works just fine on Linux machines. And Mac OS X users can run it. It also has some surprising high-end capabilities even though you can use it for free. One of the first features even the casual viewer will notice is the tabs at the bottom of the screen. These provide access to Nvu's 4 views and it's important to note that users can edit the page in any of the views.

Click any of the small images for a full-size view.

		View 1: Normal This is the view you'll use the most often and it has a number of interesting features. You can have several pages open and switch from one to another with tabs that will be familiar to Firefox users. Column widths are clearly shown. So are row heights. Positions of comments, scripts, and the like are clearly indicated. If you use tables for element placement, you'll know exactly how the cells are arranged. Bottom tabs to allow switching between views. Indicator that shows the position of the cursor in HTML elements.
		View 2: HTML tags This is a view only a geek could love, but it's useful. The display shows exactly how HTML tags are nested.
		View 3: Source Here is where Nvu shows the raw HTML code.
		View 4: Preview All of the mark-up is suppressed and you'll see the page the way it will display in the browser.

Overall: Nvu 1.0: 4 cats.

No, it doesn't have all the features of Dreamweaver, but it has a lot of features. If you're thinking about setting up a website, this is a good tool to try. To learn more, visit the Nvu website.

Good, Bad, or Indifferent: The Internet

"Is there a direct subway link from LaGuardia to Manhattan?" my younger daughter asked. I thought there wasn't, although I haven't been to NYC for a couple of years. I'd heard that the NYC MTA had finally extended the A line to JFK but that LaGuardia still depended on the Q33, Q45, and M60 bus lines. I wasn't certain, though. Less than 10 minutes later, I had definitive answers from the MTA's website. Without the Internet, I wouldn't have been able to answer the question without a call to New York.

It was a slow night, so I was playing with Stumble Upon and ran across a bio of Stevie Ray Vaughn, a blues guitarist who was killed in a helicopter crash in 1990. The article I read convinced me that I wanted to hear his music. That took me to AllOfMP3, where I found a 49-track 3-CD compilation. I listened to the first several tracks on-line and ponied up the price of the download.

Without the Internet I might never have heard of Stevie Ray Vaughn.

But the dangers seem to be increasing, too, even though law enforcement agencies around the world are working to catch the crooks who operate on the Internet.

Last week, for example, I was starting to write for a client an article about phishing and what to watch out for. I sorted through the spam in my e-mail program's spam catcher and found several messages telling me to confirm accounts at banks I don't deal with. One of the spams came to three of my addresses, so I thought I'd use that one as an example.

I knew it was fraudulent because:

• It claimed to be from a bank I don't use.
• The warning had 3 of my addresses in the "to" line along with addresses for other people.
• Of the 3 addresses that were mine, I had never given any of them to a bank.

So I examined the message and followed the link, expecting to find several characteristics that I could describe to show how phishers try to fool people. Trouble was, the hoax was so good that nothing jumped off the screen to scream "Hoax!"

And that brings me back to my general guidelines that should always apply:

• Never follow a link from an e-mail that claims to be from a financial institution. If you have an account with the company, visit the website and log in without using the link.
• Never provide information that the financial institution should already have (example: Both the security question you provided and the answer unless you're setting up a new account) or that the institution tells you not to reveal to anyone (example: your personal identification number.)

These guidelines eliminate the need to look for signs that a message may not be legitimate. Because of the ease of sending fraudulent e-mail messages, every message should be assumed to be fraudulent until it is shown to be legitimate.

Nerdly News

Practical joke leads to spyware and prison time

A couple in Israel will spend some time in prison and they've been fined more than $400,000 for creating spyware. Michael Haephrati says he created a spyware program as a practical joke, but his wife decided to market it to private investigators.

The application allowed private investigators spy on business competitors for their clients. Israeli authorities have also indicted several investigators.

In many areas, governments are taking security and privacy concerns more seriously than they have in the past.

You may already have heard about this

Google accidentally deleting the company's official blog web site late last month. A user, Trey Philips in Austin, temporarily took possession of the Web address, but did so only to keep the blog out of the hands of creeps.

The user claimed the name and set up a page that said "Google, fix your blog pleeasssee! P.S. Just to clear things up, I'm not associated with Google at all. I just wanted to take advantage of this before someone else with less worthy intentions did."

Google's official statement: "We've determined the cause of tonight's outage. The blog was mistakenly deleted by us (d'oh!) which allowed the blog address to be temporarily claimed by another user. This was not a hack, and nobody guessed our password. Our bad."

Annoying legal disclaimer

My attorney says I really need to say this: The Technology Corner website is for informational purposes only. Neither Joe nor I assume any responsibility for its accuracy, although we do our best. The information is subject to change without notice. Any actions you take based on information from the radio program or from this website are entirely at your own risk. Products and services are mentioned for informational purposes only and their various trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners. Technology Corner cannot provide technical support for products or services mentioned on the air or on the website.